Highlights from more than 125 years of homegrown Christmas movies, from Cash on Demand to Brazil.
By David Parkinson
British filmmakers have been producing Christmas pictures for more than 125 years, dating back to G.A. Smith’s Santa Claus in 1898. In 1901 came R.W. Paul’s Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost (1901), the first of over 400 worldwide screen adaptations of A Christmas Carol, starring Daniel Smith as Charles Dickens’s miser. Sadly, only a three-minute fragment of this survives, but the spooky superimpositions set a trend for festive chillers that has continued with titles as varied as The Legend of Hell House (1973), Don’t Open till Christmas (1984) and Wind Chill (2007).
There are Yuletide vignettes in the classic horror anthologies Dead of Night (1945) and Tales from the Crypt (1972), while Terence Davies created memorably unsettling Christmas scenes in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992). Indeed, a number of significant British features have included festive segments, among them Things to Come (1936), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Morvern Callar (2002) and All of Us Strangers (2023).
Others have holiday settings that aren’t central to the action, such as The Lion in Winter (1968), Twelfth Night (1996) and The Eternal Daughter (2022). Social realist outings like Hector (2015) are relatively scarce, but there are countless cosy romcoms, including Love Actually (2003), which is currently on the naughty list, along with the sad but seedy sexploitation saga Escort Girls (1974). For causing seasonal offence, however, nothing can top Ken Russell’s final short, A Kitten for Hitler (2007).
This year, Richard Curtis’s That Christmas is hoping to become an animated favourite to rank alongside the likes of The Candlemaker (1957), The Snowman (1982) and Arthur Christmas (2011). Do seek out Nadolig Plentyn Yng Nghymru (2008), a Welsh-language version of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. But we also hope you find something here to brighten your holiday.
Scrooge (1951)
Director: Brian Desmond Hurst
There have been various excellent screen manifestations of Charles Dickens’s story about a miser who becomes the embodiment of Christmas spirit after three spectral visitations. Starring Seymour Hicks, the 1935 film Scrooge broke the mold by having a female ghost, played by Marie Ney. But it’s Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1951 version that has become the classic, and that’s largely due to the performance of Alistair Sim, whose bereftness at the loss of his beloved sister sets him on the path to callous avarice, albeit abetted by Mr Jorkin, a character who was invented by screenwriter Noel Langley, who also boosted the part of cleaning-woman Mrs Dilber for Kathleen Harrison.
Built at Nettlefold Studios, the sets capture the chasm between the classes, as do the character-defining costumes. The double-exposed hauntings may not inspire dread, although the influence of expressionism is evident in C.M. Pennington-Richards’ cinematography. But this is Sim’s show, and he revisited Ebenezer in the Oscar-winning 1971 animation, A Christmas Carol.
The Holly and the Ivy (1952)
Director: George More O’Ferrall
In this Chekhovian chamber drama, based on a 1950 West End hit by playwright Wynyard Browne derived from his own experiences, the children of a Norfolk parson gather at a snowy vicarage for Christmas. Fashionista Margaret (Margaret Leighton) and soldier Michael (Denholm Elliott) are reluctant visitors to Wyndenham, as they have lost their faith and grown apart from sister Jenny (Celia Johnson), who has rejected the marriage proposal of a local engineer (John Gregson) to care for their father. However, the Reverend Martin Gregory (Ralph Richardson) isn’t the dog-collared martinet they envisage and empathises with problems that anticipate those that would shock sensibilities during Britain’s social-realist new wave.
Indeed, despite the cut-glass accents of a cast who unusually rehearsed on the sets before shooting in sequence, there’s something enduringly relevant about such themes as the breakdown of communication, the anguish of alienation, the demise of deference, and the vagaries of family life.
The Crowded Day (1954)
Director: John Guillermin
Department stores have often cropped up in festive features, but there’s little comfort or joy in this sophisticated soap opera from emerging director John Guillermin. He keeps his camera moving to convey the bustle at Bunting and Hobbs, while also deftly shifting tone to follow the fortunes of five women who work on various counters.
The storyline centring on Yvonne (Josephine Griffin) was considered scandalous for its time, as she discovers she’s pregnant by a man from a wealthy family. Even more shockingly, would-be film star Suzy (Vera Day) is assaulted by a chauffeur posing as a director. Despite reflecting the changing attitudes and aspirations of a country finally emerging from post-war austerity, screenwriter Talbot Rothwell would skirt such realist inclinations in his 20 Carry On films, and he sees the lighter side of the romantic tussle between Joan Rice and John Gregson, who even has a vintage car, as in the previous year’s Genevieve.
On the Twelfth Day… (1955)
Director: Wendy Toye
When it came to feminism, pioneering British filmmaker Wendy Toye reckoned that “doing something and getting on with it and not being a crashing bore about things is probably better than getting on a platform and making some big speech”. She ably proved her point with this delightful satire on courtship rituals, in which she plays Miss Tilly, an Edwardian woman who is bombarded by her earnest ‘true love’ (David O’Brien) with gifts inspired by the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’. Chaos ensues, as the set designed by cartoonist Ronald Searle is overrun by what Time magazine called a “pyramiding progression of flora, fauna and assorted humans”.
Toye and Searle had collaborated on the stage play Wild Thyme (1955), and would reunite on the Butter Board-sponsored A.A. Milne adaptation The King’s Breakfast (1963). But it was this Eastmancolour debunking of romance, nostalgia and festive cheer that earned them an Oscar nomination for best live-action short.
